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* Posts by fionasboots

3 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2010

Folk shun UK.gov's 'expensive' subsidised satellite broadband

fionasboots

Super fast satellite ...

... compared to our ADSL service which is actually a reasonable 5Mbps download but a pathetic 0.6Mbps up.

The satellite (from Europasat) costs £75/month (we paid for the dish etc up front, and also negotiated that tariff based on a competitors pricing) for 100Gb allowance with unlimited HTTP/email after that.

We get 22Mbps download and 6Mbps upload.

And considering the signal is bouncing all over the damn place (it comes out in Spain I believe) it's still pretty nippy in terms of ping times.

Even better, this service alone has managed to carry 1.5Tb of data up to an online backup service in about 2months (running 24/7 - you get unlimited data between 00:00 and 06:00).

So, it's clear that satellite can work but it's still ridiculously expensive for the average consumer (I'm a contractor so it's a legitimate business expense) and the dish is rather ugly and large for a normal sized family home (though you can pay more and get Sky signal piped off the same setup)

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ToryDems nearly swallow Labour blueprint of equality for all

fionasboots
Reply Icon
Boffin

Spread the non-discrimination ...

"For example, depending on the gender reassignment, there may be cause for a third toilet - many women may be upset at sharing a toilet with a man now living as a women (pre-op) for example, rightly or wrongly. The easiest way would be to rebuild into completely private and non-segregated toilets"

Building a third toilet would be discriminatory in itself and hopefully not allowed by the legislation - it would force employers to needlessly spend money and reflect the 'blame' onto the wrong group.

Really, people in the wider world surely don't care about toilet issues anymore? We've done all this now, everyone knows enough about the various flavours of gender and sexuality to not have any hang-ups (or at least to realise that feeling that way is wrong), this just puts a legal frame around it I guess to sort out those employers with influential bigots still hanging around.

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Java daddy says Sun engineers ran 'goofiest patent' contest

fionasboots
WTF?

Mixed mode

Insignia solutions, whom I worked for many years ago, already produced emulation tech that included "mixed-mode" type execution to run x86 code on UNIX/Apple (SoftWindows I think it was called). They used the same tech to come up with a Java VM called Jeode that used dynamic compilation - there's some prior art!

OR how about my, now ancient, Acorn Electron which could execute BBC Basic, obviously interpreted, and embedded assembly language as well. It even did to a bit or pre-compiling of the BASIC so that maybe counts as well!

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